“He’s in the truck.”
“When we’re finished here, let me take a look at him.”
Tess returned with the medications and eye patch, and Cole finished up quickly, showing Gus how to dose with the anti-inflammatory paste. The gentle mare tolerated everything well, and he hoped Gus wouldn’t have a problem treating her. “Let’s have you bring her back for me to take a look in two days, but call me if you have concerns about it sooner,” Cole said as he untied Lucy’s head and opened the stocks. Lucy backed out slowly.
“Your next client is waiting,” Tess said as she started cleaning up.
“I’ll be right there. I need to take a quick look at Dodger.”
Gus led Lucy to the trailer, and Cole watched as he carefully opened the end gate, making sure it didn’t hit the horse. She stepped up into the trailer without hesitation. Gus’s mannerisms were as gentle with Lucy as they had been with Dodger, and Cole began to feel foolish for suspecting he might have done anything to hurt one of his animals. He noticed Sophie out a ways, kicking her ball and running behind it.
After Gus tied Lucy inside, he closed and secured the trailer gate and went around to the passenger side of the truck. “Good boy, fella,” he said to Dodger, using a voice pitched high enough to border on baby talk. “Come on. Jump down.”
The dog jumped down from the seat and trotted around, looking up at Gus with nothing short of adoration. Gus squatted and Dodger wiggled into his arms, wagging his tail and his whole body. Gus held him gently while Cole bent over him to examine the ear. The pinna was soft, smooth, and showed no sign whatsoever of inflammation or a foreign object.
“There’s nothing here, Gus.” Cole peered inside the ear, and it looked squeaky clean. “Looks good inside too. Keep up the treatment for one more day and then stop. I’m sure he had an irritation of some kind, and he’s getting over it. He’s doing fine now.”
Gus beamed and loaded Dodger back into the truck. Cole wanted to tell him not to worry so much but wasn’t sure if that was what the man needed. Sometimes these problems came in clusters. He wouldn’t see a client for months, and then he’d see the same client for different problems several days in a row.
He was about to say good-bye when Gus surprised him. Taking off his cap and fingering it, he looked up shyly. “Can I see your little girl’s chicks?”
“Why . . . sure.” He called out to Sophie, making her catch her ball and come running.
She was ecstatic to show Gus her chickens, and Cole left them in the back of the clinic, peering into the box. He asked Tess to check on them after a few minutes, and she returned from the kennel room shaking her head and chuckling. “They’re talking about the best design for a chicken coop. Prepare yourself.”
When Cole finished up twenty minutes later, he discovered Gus still there with Sophie. Gus sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, one elbow propped on his knee bracing his head on his hand, looking enthralled while Sophie told him the story of Chicken Little. Complete with dramatic flourishes, she was saying, “The sky is falling. The sky is falling.”
Cole took a moment to lean against the doorframe and enjoy watching his daughter tell the story, too, understanding completely what his client found so fascinating.
Chapter 12
It was late afternoon, and Mattie sat at her desk, thinking.
She and Stella had finished interviewing the two high school kids named by Brooks Waverly. Their involvement mirrored that of the other boys, and Mattie felt sick at heart after talking to them. This case stirred up old feelings of fear and helplessness that she didn’t quite know what to do with. Her therapist’s assignment to think about trust and emotional resilience came to mind, but she shoved it away, wanting to stay focused on solving the murder of Candace Banks.
All the boys they’d interviewed denied knowing anything about the cap found along the killer’s escape route. It was frustrating that she couldn’t turn this item into evidence that could point to a suspect.
Sheriff McCoy had called a meeting in the briefing room, but she still had a few minutes before it started. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Sergeant Jim Madsen, Robo’s trainer.
He answered after the second ring, his drawl friendly and teasing. “How ya doin’, Deputy Mattie Cobb?”
“Not so well at the moment, Sarge.” She shared with him that Robo had found a girl’s body. “We tracked an unknown suspect away from the gravesite, and Robo found a black thermal cap by the trail. I’ve also got a lineup of people it might belong to.”
“And you want to do a scent identification lineup, right?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Robo hasn’t been trained for that. It’s more popular in Europe. We don’t use it much here in the US, and it wouldn’t be admissible in court.”
“I don’t care about that. All I want is a lead,” Mattie said. “What do you think? Could I train him to do it?”
“Given a little time, you could train that dog to do anything, Deputy. Hell, he’d drive your vehicle if you’d let him.” Madsen paused for a few beats. “Do you still have that training clicker I gave you?”
“Of course.”
“Here’s what I think you should do.”
The team sat around the table in the briefing room, all present except for Robo. Mattie had left him snoozing in her office on his dog bed. As tired as she felt, she wished she could join him.
Stella briefed the others on the results of the afternoon’s interviews, ending with how the kids denied knowledge or ownership of the cap. “Both Mattie and I think Brooks Waverly was lying when he denied it. Whether or not he’s our killer, I think that kid knows something about Candace’s death.”
Mattie took a breath before starting to speak. She felt like she was going out on a limb. “That cap has to be loaded with the scent of the person who wore it. I just got off the phone with Sergeant Madsen. We’ve come up with a way we could use it as a scent article, something quicker than DNA.” She shared their plan.
McCoy frowned. “And this is something Robo hasn’t been trained to do yet?”
“Right. But I’m sure he could learn it in a few lessons.”
“I like to run these investigations by the book, and this sounds risky. We don’t want to focus on someone without proper evidence.”
“How do you plan to carry this off?” Brody asked.
“I’ll get some volunteers and train him this evening. If he takes to it like Sergeant Madsen and I think he will, we’ll be ready by morning. We can bring all those kids in before school.”
Stella stared at her, lips pursed. Mattie looked to her for support, and the detective straightened. “Why not give it a try, Sheriff? If Robo isn’t one hundred percent accurate with a volunteer lineup by tomorrow, we’ll scrap the idea. But if he is, it would give us one more piece to look at. We can handle the information we get objectively, like any other piece of evidence.”
Brody turned to McCoy. “I’ll stay and help with the training. Cobb and I can decide together if he’s ready or not in the morning.”
“I’ll stay too,” Stella said.
McCoy took a moment to study the faces of each member of his team before focusing on Mattie. “All right,” he said. “You’re authorized to give it a try.”
Mattie had bagged a scent article from each of her volunteers: a gauzy pink scarf from Rainbow, a rumpled sweat-stained handkerchief from Brody, and a pair of gloves from Stella’s coat pocket. In addition, she scavenged a decoy from Garcia’s desk, his baseball cap. The articles were set out in a row on a table in the briefing room.